Frequently
Asked Questions

Q. Can I use
SmartWhois if I'm behind a firewall or a proxy server?

A. Yes, SmartWhois supports
SOCKS firewalls and HTTP/HTTPS proxy servers (they must support the
CONNECT method). If your firewall is not SOCKS-compliant, you'll
have to configure it to allow network traffic on TCP ports 43 and
80. Please refer to your proxy server's documentation or contact
your network administrator for information on configuring (mapping)
proxy ports. Also, see theUsing SmartWhois
From Behind a Firewallchapter of the help file for more detailed
information.

Q. I made a
query using wildcard, but the program's status bar displays
"Connection timed out" before I get any results. How can I make it
work?

A. Using wildcard queries
usually takes longer to retrieve data than using normal queries. To
handle this problem, you should set a longer timeout period(Settings=>Options=>Queries).
For example, you can change the timeout period from 45 seconds to
100 seconds.

Q. Why do I
get the "Connection timed out" or "Connection failed"
errors?

A. There are several possible
reasons:

·

Your
connection to the Internet is too slow or "fuzzy," which usually
happens when you have a low quality telephone line. Try to
reconnect to your ISP.

·

The
Whois server the program is connecting to is down. SmartWhois
obtains information from official whois databases, and these
databases are not in our control. So you'll have to wait until the
server is up and running again, which normally doesn't take
long.

·

If you
enabled IP address/hostname caching in the Options, the program
might fail to connect to a Whois server if its IP address has
recently changed. Click Clear Cache in Settings => Options =>
Cache => DNS.

·

Your
network environment does not permit outbound TCP connections on
ports 43 and 80. This is often the case when you don't have direct
Internet access, e.g. you are behind a corporate firewall, or if
you installed a personal firewall with incorrectly configured
packet-blocking rules.

Q. When
running a batch query, I only get certain percentage of the domains
/ IP addresses processed. Why some of the records are
unavailable?

A. Many whois databases
temporarily or permanently ban an IP address after receiving a
certain number of queries over a fixed period of time. To avoid
being banned, we suggest that you use a great number of proxy
servers for connecting to whois severs. SmartWhois is capable of
selecting a random server from the proxy list every time the
application connects to a whois server. This may help you avoid
being banned. Please refer to the Using SmartWhois
From Behind a Proxy / Firewall chapter of SmartWhois manual for
more information on configuring proxy servers.

Q. Can I
call SmartWhois directly from my application?

A. Yes. You can use the
command-line interface to send an IP address or domain to
SmartWhois and run the query. Please see the Command Line Options
chapter of the manual for more information on command-line usage
examples.

Q. My
firewall software warns me that SmartWhois is "attempting to access
the Internet." I am aware that some sites are able to track users
by collecting the information sent by their programs via Internet.
Why does SmartWhois "attempt to access the Internet"?

A. What alerts your firewall
are the attempts to connect to Whois databases to fetch the
requested records, and the attempts to connect to DNS serves to
resolve IP addresses to hostnames. The primary function of the
program is to obtain the most current records available from whois
databases; therefore SmartWhois makes outbound connections on TCP
ports 43 and 80 and UDP port 53. Additionally, the program may
check for updates by contactingwww.tamos.com(this functionality can be disabled). There
are no other hidden activities. We don't sell spyware.

Q. When I
click on the SmartWhois icon in the Microsoft Internet Explorer or
Firefox toolbar, the program box flashes up briefly and then
vanishes. Why this feature isn't working?

A. The SmartWhois plug-in
window is displayed only when it is active, and it is automatically
closed when the focus is moved to another window. Most likely you
have a software running that is changing the focus and activates
other windows, or always moves its window on top. We would suggest
to close all other running applications one by one to see which one
is affecting SmartWhois. Another reason for this behavior could be
the mouse cursor settings on your computer. Certain mouse driver
utilities allow you to configure the cursor to activate the window
under the cursor, or even bring it to the foreground. When these
features are enabled, they will prevent SmartWhois window from
staying open.

Q. I can't
see the owner information when querying Chinese or Japanese
domains; I see gibberish instead of characters.

A. To see text in East Asian
languages, you should install East Asian fonts in Windows. Open
Control Panel => Regional and Language Options, select the
"Languages" tab, and check the "Install files for East Asian
languages" box.

Q. What are
LOC records and are they supported by SmartWhois?

A. ALOC recordstands for geographic location information:
some domains and IP addresses may have a special DNS record that
stores the object location coordinates (Latitude, Longitude, etc.).
SmartWhois can query this information and generate a Google Map
link to view the location of an object on the map.

Q. What are
internationalized domain names and are they supported in
SmartWhois?

A. An internationalized domain
name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains
one or more non-ASCII characters. Such domain names could contain
letters with diacritics, as required by many non-English languages,
or characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew,
Chinese or Hindi. And, yes, SmartWhois supports IDN queries.

Q. IPv6
queries don't work for me. Is there anything I can do about
it?

A. To successfully make IPv6
queries you need to have Windows XP or later operating system
installed. If you're running Windows XP, the IPv6 support should be
installed. To install it, open a Command Prompt window and execute
the following command:

netsh
interface ipv6 install

Note: IPv6 is not supported on
Windows 2000 or earlier operating systems.